Mathematica 3.0 introduced the use of ButtonBoxes that allow users to create point-and-click interactive elements in notebooks. Perhaps the most noticeable example of buttons is in palettes. Palettes are simply Mathematica notebooks that contain a grid of buttons, each of which perform a pasting action.

The Mathematica Book describes the low level structures that are used to define and adjust buttons, but there still is a lack of step-by-step walkthroughs on how to create a button that does more than just pasting, evaluating, or hyperlinking. This notebook attempts to help users to learn some of the important points to keep in mind when making custom buttons. These techniques are suitable for situations where the front end's button creation dialogs are too awkward of an interface.